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Throughout the Lower School, the children are taught Skills Based Learning (SBL) through creative themes. This allows the children to learn not only what they need to know but how to learn. By teaching these skills through creative themes that capture the children’s imaginations, learning becomes deep and relevant. In science, this entails starting form a key question, such as How can we get to the moon? and using scientific enquiry and skills to find the answer.

Based in our brand-new purpose-built science laboratory, even the very youngest of our pupils are taught to begin their scientific journey into better understanding the world around them. With pupils continuing to follow a topic-lead curriculum with their class teacher, they learn about science through the processes of asking simple questions and recognising that they can be answered in different ways; observing closely, using scientific equipment; performing tests, observing changes over time and noticing patterns and relationships; identifying and classifying; using their observations and ideas to suggest answers to questions and gathering and recording data to help in answering questions.

At this time, science is studied as a whole subject area, rather than in the separate disciplines of Biology, Chemistry and Physics, and pupils will be expected to learn about working scientifically, initially studying such topics as Plants and Animals, Everyday Materials and Seasonal Changes. By the time they are in Year 6, they will be looking in depth at more complex topics like States of Matter, Sound, Light, Electricity, Properties and changes of Materials, Living things and their habitats, Animals including humans and Evolution and Inheritance, ready for their journey into Key Stage 3.